Abstract [en]

A dog tracker is something that is essential when hunting with a dog. The reason is because the hunter needs to know where the dog is always, while preferably as well knowing what happens with the dog. Today, when the traffic is increasing and more, it is of importance to be able to determine whether the dog is heading for a busy road. The tracker also gives the hunter the possibility to rescue the dog if it gets stuck or fall in water. Dog trackers are of importance to the hunter, but they are also expensive, most costs more than 2000 SEK/230 USD, so there is a desire for a cheaper dog tracker that still fulfil the demands that hunters or dog owners require.

The goal of this project is to design, build and program a dog tracker from Arduino UNO and Adafruit FONA 808, that meets the requirements stated by a user and at the same time are cheaper than the commercial equivalents. The method used are such that first relevant documents, such as Adafruit product description and testcode, are studied to gain an understanding of the units used. The units were then tested by the testcode to ensure that all parts are working correctly, this was done by testing read, delete and send SMS and get GPS-coordinates. When it was sure that all parts worked correctly a code was programmed that fulfilled all the requirements requested by a user. Then the finished dog tracker was evaluated to ensure that it fulfilled the requirements. Weight, battery time and positioning accuracy was tested, where weight was tested by a kitchen scale, battery time was tested by measuring the loss of charge once an hour over a period of three hours. From what was measured in those three hours a battery time was calculated by extrapolating loss of battery power/hour. The positioning accuracy was measured by using the dog trackers coordinates and comparing them to Google Maps and Eniro coordinates.

The conclusion of the project is that the dog tracker didn’t fulfil all the requirements, its positioning accuracy didn’t reach the requirement of max 5-meter error. Though the dog tracker is still usable for tracking because it still gives a good enough positioning for finding a dog. The dog tracker can also be used for other purposes such as placing in a car to track it in event of a theft. The dog tracker also acts as a base for future developments, like using it to send sound which is also of interest for a hunter.